Glass Bead (FOUS 39615) - Public Domain image, National Parks Gallery

Very light brownish-yellow, furnace wound and shaped glass bead. According to Lester A. Ross, author of Trade Beads from Archeological Excavations at Fort Union Trading Post National Historic Site, “a furnace-wound bead appears to have been manufactured by shaping a glob of molten glass on a wire or rod. Such beads always appear to have been shaped or impressed, and there is no visible evidence for spiral winding of the glass.”